Most local authority electoral officers support the information commissioner's recommendation to scrap the edited electoral roll, according to a new survey.
The survey of 204 councils, taken during August by the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Association of Electoral Administrators, found that 98 per cent of …

Its not so straightforward to opt out.

Don't know if this applies to everybody, but if you live in Enfield you have the option to register by post, by phone or via a web site.

However, if you want to opt out from the edited register, you can ONLY do it by post.

Worse still, even when you've opted out in previous years, they send the form out so that by default IT OPTS YOU BACK IN unless you once again tick the OPT OUT box.

Very puzzling, especially if Enfield also earns such a paltry sum from the sale of the register -- which must surely be costing far more to compile than it's worth.

I'd agree with abolishing the edited register altogether, except that my suspicious mind says that as soon as everybody has forgotten about it they will find a loophole to start selling the unedited register for many of the purposes that the edited register was used.

Access to the unedited register

The unedited register is given (yes, given) to political parties, which seems relatively unobjectionable to me. I know that their data security measures are awful, as you might expect for a bunch of amateurs - the people who do the actual campaigning are all volunteers, plus a handful of really badly paid staffers. But each one of these only has one constituency's worth of data; about 70,000 voters, or 50,000 households.

The real problem is that the whole unedited register goes to the credit rating agencies (Equifax and the like). I really object to that, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Not just for marketing

In Edinburgh, when they had a local referendum on the introduction of road pricing, the forms were only sent out to those who were on the edited register - "we are legally unable to use the full electoral register for referendums, only for elections" was their reason when I asked about this, whether this is specious or not, I have no idea.

So by opting out, which I do, I also have to opt out of (some of) the local decision making apparatus, which I really, really, really object to.

Humble & Obedient Servants.

Not sure which I distrust most, the opinions of Council staff or the result of a survey.

Information Commissioner is currently investigating how personal details of those who had opted out became available through my own Local Authority, so do not be too confident about existing security granted by making a single tick.

As for the information being requested, my lot started asking for phone numbers and email addresses this month. No chance, but thousands will provide.

EDDIE, Edinburgh: Maybe by giving the edited Register it helped to get them the good kicking they so richly deserved. Their revenge of course is to tear up so many of your roads.

@dervheid

It pains me to defend New Labour I don't see why you're picking on them. Before we had the edited roll plenty of authorities were selling the unedited roll.

The whole issue of opting out of junk mailing bugs the hell out of me. But there's a particularly nasty trick that some companies use to get you to opt in. We're all used to the check box that says "check this box if you do not want to receive direct mail from us", but a few times I've come across one of more of these check boxes for opting out followed by the final one "from time to time we pass customer information to trusted* partners, check this box if you do want us to pass on your personal data."

They lure you into checking the box to opt in by preceding it with a couple of opt outs, those not reading carefully think they are opting out of the big one when they are actually opting in. Everything, but everything to do with personal data should be explicit opt in. Time for an amendment to the DPA methinks.

My borough council...

Is as useless as they come and generally regarded as corrupt. It also pimps an edited version of the roll and the box on the form needs to be ticked if you wish to opt out of this practice.

However, after making sure the wording hasn't changed I have noticed that as I have opted out the last couple of times the box is already ticked for me. This still hasn't stopped me complaining about this practice (in the strongest possible terms) of course.

JMHA too powerful

The Junk Mailers and Harassment Association (misnamed the DMA) has too many tentacles on too many politicians strings for any effective controls to be legislated.

Get used to having your voter information, drivers licenses, billing info, bluetooth id, wifi ssn, cell phone id, and probably even the rfid tags on your clothes tracked, catalogued, databased, mined and used in order to "target" you with advertising for stuff you don't need, want, or care about.

Step 3: Profit!

"the councils each receive an average of £1,900 annually for selling edited electoral rolls"

Ok this seems so wrong. While I do not support the practices of marketing firms, I do understand the need for councils to generate revenue from sources other than our council tax. If the edited registers remain available then it is high time for the councils to start charging more for the edited register if the company or individual purchasing it will use the data for marketing purposes.

There are still legitimate reasons for purchasing a copy of the register, and those people should not be penalised. A simple clause such as £xxx for personal use, £xxxxx for commercial use would suffice and as far as I am aware, it would also be legal.

Post Code

It;'s still the same - the full register can be inspected by anyone but not copied - you have to get the details one by one - so Stalkers=good Spammers=bad

Colin, it seems as though this is another case of where you live deciding what happens. My local council have stopped the farce of public libraries holding copies. The only way to see a copy now, apparently is to go to the city hall. Not much of an improvement,but for thr dumbos who run this city,it is light speed! Gary

A few points.

1. Don't blame your council for selling the edited register - they are legally required to do so, and the fees are set by law.

2. The reason they don't want to do it is a) they get annoyed ratepayers, and b) it costs almost as much to administer as they earn.

3. As an experiment, I have opted out since this started, also become careful about ticking "don't mail me" boxes, but not registered not to receive junk mail. The amount of junk has steadily declined, so I now get only a couple of addressed items a week. Shortly, I shall sign up for Post Office "don't stuff unaddressed fliers through my door" option - then I should get almost no junk!

die die die experian

If the council is going to profit from my name & address, they'd have to be a hell of a lot more democratically accountable than they currently are.

Given that they've sewed up everything into a small set of executive committees and given away all of the city's art and leisure facilities to a "charity" whose only link to democratic accountability is that its run by relatives of connected politicians and businessmen....

well they can tittle.

But how the hell did Credit Reference Agencies manage to get their loan sharking hands on the right to the full official register?! I have a list of people less suitable than them to have it and one of the few names there is Gary Glitter.

Opt out

There should be no need to opt in or opt out. Information extracted under threat of prison should not be sold on to anyone, including credit reference agencies. What is so special about them? They are private companies offering to sell me my data back after gaining it unlawfully in the first place.

Perhaps the data protection act needs to be revised. For instance,data gatherers state what it is used for when harvesting information in a catch all type statement. Perhaps it is time that data subjects were permitted to decide to which uses their data can be put. The implementation of real penalties for data misuse would be a step in the right direction, accompany that with a more assertive ICO and we might actually begin to get somewhere.

PR red herring (standard practice)

this big announcement is for the EDITED register, not the full one, which is passed around every gov dept, quazi-gov dept routinely. (justified by terrorism/crime prevention/think of the children etc,etc)

You have to ask the question, why is it only worth a couple of grand, answer is because you can get the full one easily.

..and yes you can still go to the library to see it if you haven't already downloaded it.....

....mines the one with a DocuPen R800 in the pocket, and a packet of werthers originals for the old dear at the library.